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Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Thanks to VikingFrog totally redeeming himself from not having a video last week, we have changed the mailbag concept email address to mailsack@spitbloodtcu.com, which was introduced earlier today by SWW.

The Frogs are 23rd in both polls. That's all the exposition you get. Onward!

Coaches' Poll Rankings this week.

Potential Upsets, effecting:

#21 Texas @ UCLA. Saturday, 2:30PM. ABC. No real reason to call for the upset here other than, "Do you REALLY trust Texas, even against a shit UCLA team? Because you probably did last year too, and look where that got you." Texas will likely win more than 5 games this year, but having a QB controversy under a new OC with one of the QBs only being on scholarship because of what his brother did for the school? Probably not a good sign. Some would scoff at a 2-1 Texas team being ranked lower than a 2-1 TCU team, but that's just the way rankings go, which is what I'm banking on for most of these.

#20 West Virginia @ Maryland. Saturday, 11:00AM. ESPNU. West Virginia opened the year against Marshall and looked dominant in winning a game that could've been worse had it not been shortened by the rain. They then came out and laid an absolute beating on D-1AA Norfolk State, but don't let the 55-12 final score fool you: WVU was down 12-10 at halftime and looked absolutely atrocious. After struggling in the first half, QB Geno Smith unloaded with 371 yards and 4 TDs, but again, Norfolk State. Maryland was off last week after their squeak-it-out win against Miami. It is a game they should've won by far more than 8 points considering the yardage and turnover differentials, plus the fact that Miami was missing half of its team, but hey, it's Maryland, and who expects much from Maryland? Hopefully they will have cleaned all that strangely organized shit off their uniforms in the interim. I suppose you have to give a slight edge to Maryland as they had an off week, are playing at home and have been "tested" this season, but if Holgorsen can get his offensive attack rolling earlier than the second half this week, things could get ugly in College Park for the home team. Or, at least almost as ugly as their uniforms. Seriously die, Under Armour.

#19 Auburn @ Clemson. 11:00AM. ABC. After bouncing out of the rankings following that nail biter against something called Utah State, Auburn is back in after dispatching then top 20 ranked Mississippi State in somewhat dramatic fashion. This week they travel to SEC wannabe Clemson in a rematch of last year's 3 point overtime win for the Tigers of the Auburn variety. I'd like to say, with the way Auburn's defense has hemorrhaged points these first two weeks, Clemson should be a pretty good bet to take out Auburn. However, after thoroughly taking down Troy in their opener, Clemson had their own WTF moment last weekend in an 8 point win over Wofford. WOFFORD! Sounds like the name of a character from Fraggle Rock. Seriously though, karma has to catch up to Auburn eventually... right? An Auburn loss here would probably move them out of the top 25 for a little while.

#18 Arizona State @ Illinois. Saturday, 7:00PM. BTN. In a game I could not care any bit less about, Arizona State looks to continue their trend of whipping teams from flyover country when they travel to Champaign to take on Ron Zook and Illini. Yawn. Pac-12.

#16 Ohio State @ Miami, FL. Saturday, 6:30PM. ESPN3. Remember when this was viewed as one of the biggest games of the season? Yeah, some stuff has happened since then. But still, the Illegal Booster Bowl should be relatively fun to watch, assuming you aren't glued to Florida State/OU which conveniently comes on around the same time. Pre-bowl season, Ohio State would potentially have been a top 5 ranked team, and maybe even number one. Now? They're without the most potent parts of their offense, they're a nose-hair away from losing one at home to TOLEDO and are getting points against an 0-1 team in a similar boat. Fortunately for Miami, Nevin Shapiro is in jail where he can't do any further damage to the program, and they get back a handful of players who sat out the Maryland opener, including QB Jacory Harris. I'll be honest, this one has cripple fight written all over it, although Miami probably wins by double digits.

Potential Upsets, non-effecting:

#24 Baylor vs. SFA. Just because I have hopes and dreams and this would fulfill a lot of them. Fortunately I don't think the Coaches' can elevate the Bears over us with a win over Herpes U East, although if we both keep winning it's on the way.

That's about it for this section, unless you count Stanford/Arizona or Nebraska/Washington. FSU over OU would hardly qualify as an upset.

ESPN Approved Jumper(s):

#25 Mississippi State vs. #3 LSU. Thursday, 7:00PM. ESPN. This one has seemingly been featured as an early season SEC opener for both schools each of the past several years, and it usually lives up to the hype. Sadly, MSU killed a lot of that for ESPN by losing to Auburn, but it's football and its on so you will watch it, yes? Despite playing at home in Cowbell Land, it's kind of hard to see the Bulldogs pulling the upset here after watching LSU's defense at work the past 2 weeks, but you can't discount the Jarrett Lee factor. He's sure to cost them a game at some point, right? He hasn't tossed a pick six this season, but it's coming. Oh, it's coming. An MSU win would more than likely elevate the Bulldogs ahead of us in the new rankings, but a loss keeps them off our tails for the time being. Go Tigers. I refuse the whole eaux thing.

#26 Michigan vs. Eastern Michigan. Saturday, 11:00AM. BTN. You may scoff, but the media REALLY wants Michigan to be relevant for whatever, which is actually kind of fun because you know how much it irks Herbstreit. However, the fact that it would come at our expense is less fun, so we must root against it for the time being. Michigan provided us with the most entertaining game of the season that didn't make us want to slit our wrists last week against Notre Dame. Can Denard Robinson really do it all again for the Wolverines? Against Eastern Michigan? Probably. Hopefully it won't be enough to make them jump us.

#27 UCF vs. Florida International. Saturday, 5:00PM. Yes, they're 4 spots behind us, but the ESPNs of the world are riding a little high on the Knights this season, although I think they're giving a little too much credence to last week's crushing of Boston College. A win here probably doesn't QUITE get them into the Top 25 mix, but they're lurking annoyingly on the edges right now. Fortunately for us FIU is no slouch, having knocked off Louisville last week, so don't expect this one to be a sleepwalk for UCF.

That's it for this week. Fortunately after we dispatch the directional Lousiana's we'll have a full afternoon to catch the second half of the middle games and all of the late ones. Football. It's great.

I highly suggest using "Pepe Sylvia" as your submission name if you want guaranteed service.

Here at Spitblood, despite what our #6 TCU blog ranking suggests to the contrary, we try and keep things as fresh as possible. By fresh I somewhat mean "original" and "funny," but I mostly mean "offensive" and "outlandish" and "anti-Craig James" and "over the top" because, truth be told, that's what keeps most of you coming back. There's a reason sites like Kissing Suzy Kolber and EDSBS are among the most popular in the blogosphere - hint: It's not because they play it safe.

However, up to this point we've mostly limited our scope to the warped minds of what our 4-5 main contributors and left it at that, with you readers only being able to contribute in the comments section. NO MORE!! Thanks to the long, heartfelt and, if we're being honest, kinda homo-erotic pro-Erik Miller diatribe on a months old post by commenter "italianstallion03," we've been inspired toopen this joint up to everyone on occasion via a spitblood reader mailsack. And, unlike Bill Simmons, I assure you our mailsacks will be Red Sox, Karate Kid and Shawshank Redemption free.

We're still toying with it so things are subject to change at LITERALLY any minute, but here's the idea. We want ALL of your questions. Don't feel limited to TCU/college football by any means. Have you seen the KSK sex and fantasy football mailsacks? Ok, well, I personally won't answer any fantasy football questions as I have not yet been sucked in by that devilish diversion, nor will we attempt to give you any insight on your interpersonal relationships, but you get the idea - ask a real question, but also toss in something off topic for discussion and lulz. Here, I'll give you an example, "Is Casey Pachall's performance these first two games a true measure of his overall talent and a harbinger for the future or just a result of competing against overrated and shoddy defenses? Also, isn't that song, "I saw Mommy kissing santa claus, when taken in the context of hearing it sung through the voice of a child, kind of fucked up considering, at that age, said child doesn't understand that Santa Claus is really their father?" Ask us ANYTHING and we will attempt to answer it with as little insight and as much humor as possible, and with TONS of added snark.

Further, and perhaps most importantly, for those of you out there who hate us, here is your chance to let us know directly and get an even more back-handed knee jerk response than you'd get in the comments! Everybody wins! And by all means, PLEASE don't use your real names. Wouldn't want anyone getting cold feet on really opening up and letting their sheltered-by-social-norms personalities shine! Spitblood handles are obviously preferred, but clever pseudonyms are encouraged in any case. I've got dibs on Butty McPoopstain!

For now the plan is to have a regular rotation of our contributors answering each mailsack to ease the load and give a different perspective from mailsack to mailsack. However, if you have a specific question for a specific contributor, make note of that and these questions will be held until that contributor comes up in the rotation. Or I say they will, I actually can't promise that, but it's a nice thought and ideal. Here's a handy dandy guide to what you might expect:

lyle mailsack - If you have a genuine TCU question, especially those not related to football, lyle is your guy. You also probably run less risk of being condescended at to the point that you stop reading spitblood altogether.

SWW mailsack - Umm... I'd say I'm probably most closely aligned with the manic/depressive SB readers out there in that one minute I'll call for TCU to go 11-1 this year, and the next rant about how much Kellen Moore is going to mouth breathe in our end zone come November. So, if things are looking good and you want to hear something pretty, I'll tell it to you, and if things are going bad and you want to be talked off the ledge in the sense that you want to step forward and fall to your death from said ledge, I'm your guy as well. I also attempt to stay up to date on all things TCU basketball, but as you can imagine, that's hard sometimes.

SnK mailsack - Besides being the most knowledgeable baseball soothsayer with the keenest eye for late round MLB pitching talent to ever walk God's green earth, kerleys is also simultaneously the contributor who will do the most damage to your self esteem should he deem your line of questioning unworthy. Call him out at your own risk.

Dear Leader/spitpurple mailsacks - Probably a good mix of all three above, although, like all of us, both guys are uber quick with a backhand when necessary.

WILDCARD: bucknasty mailsacks - I can't say for sure these will ever happen, but I hope we get at least one chance to let this man loose on the commentariat because if you think kerleys is short tempered and caustic towards "bad" TCU fans, you clearly haven't met the master.

We have no specific time-table on when the first mailsack will drop, nor the frequency of future mailsacks. We'll start small with, say, once a month, and then add additional 'bags if it is deemed necessary. However, if you guys provide us with timely questions pertaining to that week's game, I can see intermittent, shorter mailsacks happening, or even a small Q&A section in the previews. All that to say, it's up to YOU, the reader, in regards to how much soup is for you.

So send those questions to mailsack@spitbloodtcu.com and we will have the first one up and running as soon as there enough ammo for us to poop on.

There are probably a lot of reasons why you're looking forward to Saturday's game against Louisiana-Monroe: it's the home opener, getting your first look at the half-completed new Amon G, getting your first look at the new home uniforms and of course it being the Frogs' first game against a Sun Belt team in nine long years.

But with a win against the Warhawks, Gary Patterson will notch his 100th career victory- with all of them coming at TCU. To put that in perspective, consider that only eight active FBS coaches have won 100 games at their current schools: